We have been very quiet. Last year was an intense year for us. We hired a larger team and we started a bunch of really interesting projects. Things became hectic quickly. There’s probably a good reason we only allow one project at a time in Game Dev Tycoon :D.

Anyway, as the year progressed, some projects went well, others not so much and not everything has gone to plan. Halfway through the year a new idea for a game came up that quickly became one of the favorites among the team. We realized that this new idea required a much bigger focus and shelved some of the projects that weren’t progressing as much as we’d hoped. This also gave us the opportunity to take the best elements from these shelved projects and integrate them into this new idea.

After prototyping this new project in HTML5, we also realized that this game will really work better with a full 3D engine, and, after spending months working with three.js, we decided to restart the game from scratch in Unity. More on that decision here.

Sadly, all this means that it will be a little while longer before we can show something but we are all really excited about the project. Here are some pointers on what we currently focus on:

Game #2

Our main focus is Game #2. Game #2 is a humorous and sophisticated business simulation game in the spirit of classics like Theme Hospital, Dungeon Keeper and Star Topia. It’s a new exciting concept and we are focusing on a great single player experience, full with interesting game mechanics and interactive story-telling. It’s our first 3D game and has simulation as well as base building elements. We are super excited about this but unfortunately it’s too early to show more (especially since we are switching engine).

Game Dev Tycoon 2

Game Dev Tycoon 2 is a long term goal for us. Last year we spent a considerable amount of time working on concepts for it (including a early gameplay prototype, more than just talk!). We wanted to prove that we have the necessary vision to make a sequel worthwhile. I think we do. We are innovating on the core gameplay, adding more and more features and aim to deliver a much more mature simulation game (while keeping it fun). We feel though that we can learn a lot from focusing on Game #2 first, and then coming back to the game dev genre. We are not leaving Game Dev Tycoon on the wayside though. More on this soon!

Will you guys be beta/demo’ing the games for feedback? Or are you going to go along the lines like GDT where you release the game and patch as you go?

EDIT:

not being greedy! I promise! I just want to know out of curiosity. TB really banged up your earlier build of GDT and I’m assuming/recommending that you guys are going to have some testing before going with a full release.

Yes, at some stage we will do beta testing but that’s a long way off still. We definitely learned this lesson from the GDT launch. Pity, that TB never adjusted his video to reflect our changes. I think we pretty much solved most of his complaints.

Yeah, I was pretty sure you would do some sort of beta testing.
I know you guys are far from releasing any kind of beta, I was just curious what actions you guys are going to take with your new projects.

Man that sounded kind of deeuuuuchhhyyy… I really don’t mean any bad guys!